He’s a lawyer suing the school in the nastiest, highest-profile claim it has ever faced.

They are married.

He just won a $2.5 million settlement last week. His fees, whatever they are, will cost the school that she has been elected to oversee, but they will also enrich her household.

Perhaps it’s just one of those things that can happen to a power couple.

Boulder attorney Baine Kerr and his wife, Cindy Carlisle, told me they never thought this conflict of interest would loom as large or go on for as long as it did. But they also say they both took steps to disclose and manage it properly.

“A conflict of interest doesn’t mean you are a bad person,” said Carlisle. “It’s bad if you have one and don’t disclose it and don’t act accordingly.”

The conflict began in 2002. That year, University of Colorado student Lisa Simpson came to Kerr to discuss her case and Carlisle launched her bid for regent.

Simpson alleged she was raped as a result of CU’s debauched football recruitment program. Her case eventually toppled careers and besmirched CU’s reputation as a safe place for parents to send daughters, but it dragged on for six years.

Kerr said he first thought it would be settled quickly and quietly.

“We assumed that the university would not want to take a stand in defense of gang rape,” he said.

Carlisle never discussed the case publicly while running for regent. “My husband has any number of cases going at any given time,” she said. “This was one case nobody knew where it was going.”

Carlisle also considered that she might not have been elected. And her husband’s case might have been dropped or dismissed. But as fate would have it, she was elected in November 2002, and just a few weeks later, her husband filed the suit.

University spokesman Ken McConnellogue said Carlisle recused herself from all discussions regarding the lawsuit and was prevented from seeing any documents related to the case. Additionally, it was university president Hank Brown who settled, not the regents.

Carlisle said she also hired an attorney to guide her as an “ethics counsel” as she held on to her post.

For his part, Kerr said he disclosed his relationship to his client and got her approval to continue on as her attorney. He also had one of his associates depose former university president Betsy Hoffman. Carlisle, after all, sat on the board that served as Hoffman’s boss. So it would have been a little chilling to have Kerr asking the questions.

Being married, they did, of course, talk about the case, said Kerr. But Carlisle never possessed any information that would have given him an advantage.

“Sounds to me like they did everything right,” said John Gleason, regulation counsel for the Colorado Supreme Court. “High-profile lawyers will sometimes have a spouse or someone also holding a responsible position.”

Not so fast, said Kevin O’Brien, an ethics and legal studies professor at the University of Denver.

People in positions of trust need to do more than just manage conflicts. They need to avoid them entirely if possible.

“Not only do you have to avoid conflicts, but also the appearance of a conflict,” he said. “There may be nothing illegal here, or even something that violates codes of ethics, but people are going to still think it’s a problem.”

The ethical high road would have been for either Kerr to refer Simpson to another attorney or for Carlisle to step down as regent, O’Brien said.

Despite hiring a personal ethics counselor, this never occurred to Carlisle.

“I never thought I should resign,” she told me. “I was elected, and I did not hear from my constituents that this was something I needed to take into consideration.”

This rape case was one of the most significant issues CU faced during Carlisle’s tenure, and every time it was discussed, she had to leave the room, leaving her constituents unrepresented. There were, however, myriad other important issues she tended to instead, she explained.

“The university is not a football team headed up by one coach,” she said. “There’s academics ”

Kerr said he also felt an obligation to keep going, despite the conflict. “My client did not want me leave her,” he said.

So there you have it. A nice, neat little explanation. She’s still a regent and now running as a Democrat for state Senate. He’s counting a $2.5 million settlement for his client and carving an impressive notch in his lawyerly gun.

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